The Latest: Hurricane Milton threatens to overshadow presidential campaigning

Hurricane Milton is threatening to overshadow presidential campaigning as it menaces Florida.

The storm has already scrambled Donald Trump's schedule. He put off a virtual event Tuesday night focused on health care and postpone a Univision town hall in Miami. He's scheduled to be in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

Vice President Kamala Harris will virtually attend a briefing on the storm and the federal response that President Joe Biden is receiving Wednesday at the White House. Harris plans to head to Nevada and Arizona on Thursday. She spent Tuesday in New York taping interviews on ABC’s “The View,” with radio personality Howard Stern and on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

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Here’s the latest:

President Joe Biden has told the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “You’re doing a hell of a job.”

Biden made the comment to FEMA chief Deanne Criswell during a virtual briefing at the White House with federal authorities bracing for Hurricane Milton’s making landfall in Florida.

It was meant as a compliment, but it immediately recalled then-President George W. Bush telling his FEMA director, Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Bush said that before the extent of the mismanaged federal response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina had become clear and it later long haunted him.

South Dakota’s top elections official has removed hundreds of people from the state’s voter rolls even with voting already underway.

Republican Secretary of State Monae Johnson says the move was necessary to defend the integrity of the election.

But critics say it violates a federal law and could disenfranchise valid voters who are naturalized U.S. citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota has called for the 273 voters to be reinstated.

South Dakota was one of the first states to begin early voting for the November general election. Absentee voting began Sept. 20.

Vice President Kamala Harris warned against jacking up prices on Americans dealing with back-to-back hurricanes.

“Those evacuating before Hurricane Milton or recovering from Hurricane Helene should not be subject to illegal price gouging or fraud — at the pump, airport, or hotel counter,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.

Harris said the federal government is tracking allegations and “will hold those taking advantage of the situation accountable.”

President Joe Biden made a similar demand Tuesday.

“I’m calling on the airlines and other companies to provide as much service as possible to accommodate evacuations and not to engage in price gouging, to just do it on the level,” he said at the White House.

President Joe Biden says that the destruction from Hurricane Helene is going to cost billions of dollars that victims will need quickly and that “Congress better be ready to step up to help.”

Biden made the comments in excerpts of his interview recorded Tuesday with theGiro. 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 Election Day 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 that, “A lot of folks are out there spreading lies about what we are not doing, that things are not going well. That we are not responding.”

He responded, “We’ve been completely responsive, and we’ve been ahead of the game.”

Donald Trump is returning to New York in the race’s final stretch, scheduling a rally at the city’s iconic Madison Square Garden stadium.

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

It will be Trump’s second rally in the city he grew up in 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 draw outsized media attention.

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

— By Jill Colvin