The Latest: Trump to campaign in New York and Harris speaks at Hispanic leadership conference

Donald Trump is taking his message Wednesday to a somewhat unlikely place: suburban New York.

The Republican presidential nominee and former president is heading to Uniondale, on Long Island, an area that could be key to his party maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts Joe Biden carried in 2020.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 47th Annual Leadership Conference in Washington and has trips planned later in the week to Michigan and Wisconsin.

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Here’s the latest:

Harris questions how Trump would carry out promised mass deportation

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has criticized Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of people who are in the United States illegally.

The Republican former president has pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history if he’s reelected in November. He’s provided no detail on how he’d handle it.

Harris questioned Trump’s intentions Wednesday during a speech in Washington to Hispanic members of Congress. She asked whether her rival would need to rely on “massive raids” and “massive detention camps” to achieve his deportation goal.

Trump was expected to appear in Uniondale on New York’s Long Island later Wednesday.

The National Treasury Employees Union endorses Harris for president

The National Treasury Employees Union endorsed Kamala Harris for president Wednesday.

“When it comes to treating federal employees with respect, valuing their service and investing in their work, Kamala Harris is the clear choice,” said National President Doreen Greenwald. “She shares our values and our commitment to making sure that the federal government works for all Americans. She has been a strong advocate for the issues that matter most to federal employees: fair pay, paid family leave, adequate agency funding and staffing, and robust collective bargaining rights.”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to fire tens of thousands of federal workers if elected. In 2020, Trump issued an executive order called “Schedule F” that would have stripped them of job protections.

As Trump seeks Polish-American votes, he and the Polish president are due to be at the same event

Donald Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda are scheduled to attend the same event this Sunday in Pennsylvania, a battleground state in this year’s presidential election, as Trump seeks to tap into the Polish-American vote.

A meeting between the two at a Polish-American shrine hasn’t yet been confirmed, but seemed possible given their friendly ties in the past — and the fact that Duda’s office said it expected a meeting if Trump were to attend.

Pennsylvania has one of the largest Polish-American populations in the county, and both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris want their support. During the recent presidential debate in Philadelphia, Harris appealed to Polish Americans by casting Trump as a threat to the security of Poland and Europe more widely because of his opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Trump won the state in 2016 but Democratic President Joe Biden won in 2020.

Police commissioner says person who may have been training a bomb detecting dog caused false explosives report

Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder says someone who may have been training a bomb detecting dog prompted false reports of explosives being found near former President Donald Trump’s rally on New York’s Long Island.

“There is a person who is being questioned who may have been training a bomb detection dog near the site,” Ryder said. “The individual with the bomb dog falsely reported explosives being found and that individual is currently being detained by the police.”

Officials say online reports of explosives found in a car near a Trump rally are false

Nassau County officials say social media reports that explosives were found in a car near former President Donald Trump’s New York rally on Long Island just days after the second apparent assassination attempt on him are false.

Christopher Boyle, spokesperson for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, and Lt. Scott Skrynecki, spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department, both said Wednesday morning that the reports are unfounded.

“No. Ridiculous. Zero validity,” Boyle said.

“False,” Skrynecki said in a text.

The officials said they would be releasing an official statement later.

In a post on X, Musk says ‘Trump must win’ the presidential election

Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, posted overnight that “Trump must win” to save the country.

“Unless Trump is elected, America will fall to tyranny,” he wrote to his nearly 200 million followers. He was replying to a post that argued the former president is the only candidate fighting an impending American dictatorship.

The post falls into a recent pattern for Musk, who endorsed Trump in July. He frequently jumps into the political fray with inflammatory commentary during tense moments. He also has repeatedly shared misinformation about elections to his massive audience on X.

Musk’s critics and several election officials have condemned his actions as irresponsible, but the 53-year-old billionaire and many conservatives vehemently disagree. They sharply criticize Democrats for suggesting that speech should be moderated or criminalized and blame the assassination attempts against Trump on the left’s rhetoric.

White House hosts first meeting with Trump, Harris transition teams

Representatives for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris ′ transition teams met for the first time at the White House, the Biden administration announced Wednesday, as the outgoing administration plans to smooth the handoff to whomever wins in November.

Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients hosted a meeting Tuesday of the White House Transition Coordinating Committee — the government’s senior-most transition planning group — and for the first time this year included Harris and Trump aides. The meeting and invitation to both parties’ representatives are required under the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the designated candidate representatives serve in an advisory capacity.

Now a Roe advocate, woman raped by stepfather as a child tells her story in Harris campaign ad

A 22-year-old woman who became an abortion rights advocate after she was raped by her stepfather as a child tells her story in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she’s never slept a full night in her life — her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice president Tuesday.

“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”

The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week.

New Jersey voters are set to pick a successor to late congressman in special election

Voters in northern New Jersey are set to settle a special U.S. House election to fill the seat that opened when Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died earlier this year.

Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver and Republican Carmen Bucco are competing for the seat in the heavily Democratic and majority-Black 10th Congressional District. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy set the special election under state law after Payne died in April. He had served on the House for more than two decades.

Wednesday’s election determines who serves out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends Jan. 3, 2025. The regular election process held in parallel will determine who fills the seat after that. McIver and Bucco are also on the ballot for the full term in the seat, along with third-party candidates.