Hot, dry weather and wildfire smoke are elevating ground-level ozone across most of Minnesota today.

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Presidential candidates typically focus 

 on Wednesday is taking his message 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 

. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020, particularly in coastal New York and California, and going on offense to challenge Democrats elsewhere.

Long Island in particular features one of the most 

, between first-term Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and Democrat Laura Gillen. D’Esposito is a former New York Police detective who won in 2022 in a district that Biden won by about 15 percentage points in 2020.

Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social platform that the GOP has “a real chance of winning” New York “for the first time in many decades." In that same post, Trump also pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.

 for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.

On the Democratic side of the campaign, Vice President 

 is expected to speak at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 47th Annual Leadership Conference in Washington on Wednesday, and has trips planned later in the week to Michigan and Wisconsin.

Latino voters form a critical bloc in swing states such as Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Speaking on the Nueva Network this week with the personality known as “Chiquibaby,” Harris promoted her proposed tax deductions for new small businesses, her experience prosecuting border cases as California attorney general and her support for offering a “pathway to citizenship for those who have earned it.”

 with members of the National Association of Black Journalists. She decried Trump’s rhetoric and said voters should make sure he “can’t have that microphone again.”

Trump is attempting to return to his campaign cadence after Sunday's 

 as he golfed in Florida. On Tuesday, he 

, and has not appeared to alter plans for upcoming trips to the nation's capital and North Carolina later in the week.

, is scheduled to hold an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday.

The Associated Press

Author

The presidential candidates are taking a brief break from campaigning in battleground states. On Wednesday, Donald Trump will be in suburban New York. Also Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris plans to speak at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus conference. 

Trump and Harris are taking a brief break from campaigning in battleground states

Go Deeper.

Like this?