Trump to visit swing districts in Michigan and Wisconsin as battleground campaigning increases
LANSING, Michigan — LANSING, Michigan (AP) — Donald Trump is scheduled to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday, as the former president travels more to states crucial to the Labor Day election.
Trump is focused on regaining states he won in 2016 but narrowly lost in 2020, with stops in central Michigan and western Wisconsin.
Trump’s day begins with an afternoon rally in Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing. Trump won Eaton County, which includes part of Lansing, in both 2016 and 2020, but by a narrower margin the second time around. It will be his third visit to the state in the past nine days and his second this week after speaking to the National Guard Association in Detroit on Monday.
He will later visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall led by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who supported him in Detroit. It will be Trump’s first visit to Wisconsin since the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which ended three days before President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, making way for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Along with Pennsylvania, which Trump visits on Friday, the three Midwestern states form a northern industrial bloc that Democrats held for two decades before Trump won them in 2016. Biden reclaimed them on his way to the White House in 2020.
Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, have blitzed the battlefield states In recent weeks, and again this week, Vance was in both states.
The offensive comes as the revitalized Democratic Party rally behind Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Harris and Walz are with the aim of profiting the increase in enthusiasm among the party’s base since its campaign launched a little over a month ago. They hope that this excitement — which was on full display at last week’s convention in Chicago — will spread to more moderate areas as they embark on a two day bus tour in Georgia, including events in the rural southern regions of the state.
Trump’s appearances in Michigan and Wisconsin both come in districts where elections will be volatile.
Potterville is in Michigan’s 7th District, which is a mix of Republican-dominated counties like Clinton and Shiawassee and Democratic strongholds like Ingham, home to the state Capitol and Michigan State University. The district is expected to be one of the most competitive in the country this fall, following the decision of incumbent Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin to run for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
La Crosse, meanwhile, is a hub in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Derrick Van Orden narrowly won in 2022. Democrat Rebecca Cooke won the Aug. 13 primary and will run against him in November.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.