The Latest: Hurricane Milton threatens to overshadow the presidential election campaign

Hurricane Milton threatens to overshadow the presidential election campaign as it threatens Florida.

The storm has already thrown Donald Trump’s schedule into disarray. He postponed a virtual event Tuesday night focused on health care and postponed a Univision town hall in Miami. He is scheduled to be in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

Vice President Kamala Harris will virtually participate in a news conference about the storm and the federal response that President Joe Biden is hosting at the White House on Wednesday. Harris plans to travel to Nevada and Arizona on Thursday. She spent Tuesday in New York taping interviews for ABC’s “The View,” with radio host Howard Stern and for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

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Here’s the latest:

Vice President Kamala Harris warned against raising prices for Americans struggling with back-to-back hurricanes.

“Those evacuating from Hurricane Milton or recovering from Hurricane Helene should not face illegal price gouging or fraud – at the gas pump, at the airport or at the hotel counter,” she said in a statement Wednesday.

Harris said the federal government was following up on the allegations and would “hold accountable those who took advantage of the situation.”

President Joe Biden made a similar request on Tuesday.

“I urge airlines and other companies to provide as much service as possible to enable evacuations and not to engage in price gouging, but just do it on an equal footing,” he said at the White House.

President Joe Biden says Hurricane Helene’s destruction will cost billions of dollars that victims will need quickly and that “Congress had better be prepared to help.”

Biden made these comments in excerpts of his interview recorded with theGiro on Tuesday. The excerpts were released as Hurricane Milton threatens to unleash new devastation in Florida.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced him at the top of the Democratic ticket, have previously criticized former President Donald Trump, now the Republican nominee, for spreading false information about the federal response to Helene.

In the interview excerpts, Biden says: “A lot of people out there are spreading lies about what we’re not doing, that things aren’t going well. That we’re not responding.”

He replied: “We reacted immediately and were ahead of the competition.”

Donald Trump returns to New York in the final leg of the race, planning a rally at the city’s iconic Madison Square Garden stadium.

Trump is planning his event for Oct. 27, opening the final week of the campaign, according to a campaign official familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.

It will be Trump’s second rally in the city where he grew up, following a stop in the South Bronx in May.

Trump has claimed he believes he can win New York, even though it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state and the city even more so. But such an event is likely to attract outsized media attention.

The former president is also campaigning in other Democratic states this week, including California and Colorado.

– By Jill Colvin