The Latest: Trump campaigns in Michigan, Wisconsin; Harris will have sit-down interview with CNN

Former President Donald Trump is campaigning Thursday in Michigan and Wisconsin as he ramps up battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will sit down Thursday for the first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash will give Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has eschewed uncontrolled environments.

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Here’s the Latest:

Former President Donald Trump is campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin as he ramps up his battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.

Trump is intensely focused on recapturing states he won in 2016 but lost narrowly in 2020 as he continues to adjust to the reality of his new race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s first stop was Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing, where he railed against the Biden administration over inflation in the most dramatic terms, accusing Harris and President Joe Biden of having presided over “an economic reign of terror” and “committing one financial atrocity after another.”

“Kamala has made middle-class life unaffordable and unlivable and I’m going to make America affordable again,” he vowed to supporters at Alro Steel.

In a new book, former President Donald Trump calls his 2018 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki “a GREAT meeting” and threatens to imprison Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg if the tech mogul does anything this year akin to his $400 million donation to local election offices in 2020.

The book, entitled “Save America,” is a collection of pictures, anecdotes and reminiscences from Trump’s presidential campaigns and term in office.

In it, Trump defended his widely criticized Helsinki meeting with Putin, in which Trump said he gave equal weight to the Russian president’s claims not to have interfered in the 2020 presidential election as to the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies. In regards to his meeting with Zuckerberg, Trump writes that “He would bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT,” referring to the more than $400 million that Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg, donated to election offices in 2020.

The book is scheduled to be released Sept. 3. It is one of a number of commercial ventures the former president has launched that include a special pair of sneakers, an edition of the Bible and digital trading cards. “Save America” will sell for $99 with a signed copy going for $499.

▶ Read more about Trump’s new book

The first clip of CNN’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, is up.

In it, Harris is pressed about once supporting the Green New Deal — a sweeping package of policies meant to drastically reduce the nation’s greenhouse emissions at an accelerated pace — and other liberal policy initiatives she supported while running in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary but now no longer does.

“My values have not changed,” Harris responded.

She added of the Green New Deal, “I have always believed — and I have worked on it — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter.”

The vice president said that the U.S. had to set deadlines to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the Biden administration has done that. She added that her policies around the U.S.-Mexico border also have not changed, noting that she prosecuted human and drug smugglers as California attorney general.

This is the first sit-down interview Harris has done since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed her.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters at a briefing Thursday that the military has approved a request from the Department of Homeland Security to provide additional support to both the Harris and Trump presidential campaigns.

The support will include both active duty and National Guard forces who will provide additional helicopter lift, explosives detection, chemical weapons detection and military working dogs among other assets to provide both campaigns increased security and support.

The support will continue for both campaigns through election day and for the next president and vice-president-elect through inauguration day, Singh said.

With most states reliably red or blue, the path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency runs through seven states where the contest is expected to be narrowly decided.

Those are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All together, they are home to only 18.3% of the country's population.

The Associated Press has been tracking the campaign appearances of the Democratic and Republican tickets since March.

Since then, Pennsylvania has been getting the most love from both campaigns, with a total of 21 visits, including one planned this coming weekend. Wisconsin and Michigan are close behind with 17 and 16, respectively.

Most states haven’t been visited at all, and a handful with clusters of wealth, such as California, get attention not for their voters but when the campaigns want to tap the wallets of the rich.

JD Vance was greeted with some cheers and some boos during an appearance before a top firefighters union.

Vance appeared Thursday at the annual meeting of the International Association of Firefighters in Boston.

After receiving a mixed reaction to some of his comments, he remarked that it “sounds like we've got some fans and some haters — that's OK."

One of Vance's remarks that elicited both cheers and jeers was that he and Trump “are the most pro-American worker ticket in history.”

The GOP vice presidential nominee’s appearance came a day after Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz addressed the same group. The organization’s political arm endorsed President Joe Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 campaign.

Vance got a larger reaction of cheers when he promised support for collective bargaining and more benefits for firefighters.

Next month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes.

That's according to rules that host network ABC News shared this week with both campaigns.

A copy of the rules was provided to the Associated Press on Thursday by a senior Trump campaign official on condition of anonymity ahead of the network’s announcement. The Harris campaign on Thursday insisted it was still discussing the muting of mics with ABC.

The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign.

Harris’ campaign had advocated for live microphones for the whole debate, saying in a statement that the practice would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates.”

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Associated Press reporter Jill Colvin in New York contributed.

The Army says an Arlington Cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” during an altercation with a member of Trump's campaign staff that took place as Trump was attending a wreath-laying for service members killed in the Afghanistan war withdrawal.

In a statement Thursday, the Army said the employee was trying to make sure those participating in the wreath-laying ceremony were following the rules, and “acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption.”

The Trump campaign has been facing blowback since an NPR report said that two Trump campaign staff members had “verbally abused and pushed” aside a cemetery official who tried to stop them from filming and photographing in Section 60, the burial site for military personnel killed while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Federal law prohibits campaign or election-related activities within Army national military cemeteries.

The Trump campaign has claimed the Republican presidential nominee’s team was allowed to have a photographer during the Monday event and has contested the allegation that a campaign staffer pushed a cemetery official.

Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski says Vice President Kamala Harris has been dodging the news media ahead of her interview Thursday night on CNN.

Lewandowski, who was recently brought back to the Trump campaign, said the former president has conducted more than three dozen interviews in recent weeks while Harris refused to grant an interview to a major news outlet.

He also complained that Trump will have to “beat two Democratic nominees” after Harris’ “coronation” by Democrats, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. Harris “can’t hide” from the Biden administration’s record on jobs and inflation, Lewandowski told reporters on a call Thursday morning.

Democrats’ enthusiasm about their vote in November has surged over the past few months, according to polling from Gallup. About 8 in 10 Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared with 55% in March.

This gives them an enthusiasm edge they did not have earlier this year. Republicans’ enthusiasm has increased by much less over the same period. About two-thirds of Republicans now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting.

Donald Trump is scheduled to campaign Thursday in Michigan and Wisconsin as the former president ramps up battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.

Trump’s intense focus on recapturing states he won in 2016 but lost narrowly in 2020 continues with stops in the middle of Michigan and western Wisconsin.

Trump’s day starts with an afternoon rally in Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing. Trump won Eaton County, where part of Lansing is located, in both 2016 and 2020, but by a smaller margin the second time.

Later, he'll visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall moderated by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed him in Detroit. It will be Trump’s first visit to Wisconsin since the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will sit down Thursday for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash will give Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has eschewed uncontrolled environments, while also giving her a fresh platform to define her campaign and test her political mettle ahead of an upcoming debate with former President Donald Trump set for Sept. 10. But it also carries risk as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup following Joe Biden’s exit and last week’s Democratic National Convention.

The CNN interview is set to air at 9 p.m. EDT. It was scheduled to be taped at 1:45 p.m. EDT at Kim’s Cafe, a Black-owned restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. The interview comes during Harris' two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia that culminates with an evening rally in the coastal city.

Joint interviews during an election year are a fixture in politics; Biden and Harris, Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Biden — all did them at a similar point in the race.