The Latest: Trump and Harris concentrate on Texas with less than 2 weeks to go before Election Day

  • Canadian Press

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Thomas & Mack Center, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will center their attention on Texas on Friday with both presidential candidates holding events in the staunchly Republican state. The vice president will team up with Beyonce for a rally aimed at highlighting the perilous medical fallout from the state's strict abortion ban and putting the blame squarely on Trump.

Meanwhile, the former president will hold a news conference in Austin before sitting down with podcaster Joe Rogan later on.

President Joe Biden will visit a reservation in Arizona, a long-promised trip to Indian Country that Democrats hope could boost Harris' turnout effort in a key battleground state.

Follow the AP's Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here's the latest:

Biden heads to Indian Country as Harris steps up appeal to Native American voters

President Joe Biden is at last making his way to Indian Country, paying a long-promised visit to a reservation in Arizona that Democrats hope could provide a boost to Vice President Kamala Harris' turnout effort in a key battleground state.

Biden's visit to the Gila River Indian Community's land on the outskirts of metro Phoenix will be his first to Indian Country as president -- something he promised tribal leaders he would do nearly two years ago.

During the visit, Biden intends to formally apologize to Native Americans for the U.S. government's role in the abuse and neglect of Native children sent to federal boarding schools to assimilate them into white society, according to the White House.

Read more here.

Allies hope a Trump win changes the system for mortgages. Some warn it will make them pricier

If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, Republicans hope he will fulfill a longstanding GOP goal of privatizing the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under government control since the Great Recession.

But Democrats and some economists warn that, especially in this time of high mortgage rates, doing so will make buying a home even more expensive.

Read more here.

Like Biden, Harris puts focus on Trump as Election Day draws near

With the end of her abbreviated presidential campaign in sight, Kamala Harris is trying to put the focus squarely on Donald Trump and his threat to democratic institutions, echoing the strategy used by Joe Biden before he ended his reelection bid.

It's a bet that fear of the former Republican president can rally Harris supporters and nudge undecided voters to her side in the final days. Harris' challenge will be connecting philosophical questions about American democracy with the everyday concerns of individual Americans.

The effort will be on full display Tuesday, when Harris delivers what her team describes as her closing argument from the Ellipse, the grassy space adjacent to the National Mall in Washington. It's the same place where Trump stood when he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in what became a bloody attempt to prevent the certification of Biden's election victory.

Read more here.